Toronto Star reporter Daniel Dale has served Mayor Rob Ford with a libel notice over comments the mayor made during a televised interview earlier this week.

Mr. Dale published a statement Thursday saying he served the notice against both the mayor and Vision TV – which aired the broadcast – as the first step of a defamation lawsuit. He’s asking the mayor to retract the “false insinuation that I am a pedophile,” the statement said.

Star editor Michael Cooke told The Globe Thursday that the newspaper’s lawyers are at City Hall, serving the mayor. A process server delivered the legal document to the mayor inside his office about 5:30 p.m. The lawyer for Mr. Dale, Iris Fischer, said Mr. Dale now has six weeks to serve a statement of claim.

In his statement, Mr. Dale said that, at first, he was reluctant to sue. “I didn’t want to complicate my happy life,” he wrote. “I’m a non-confrontational guy, and I just wanted to write articles and go home.” But he said what changed his mind was the mayor’s “persistence” in repeating the claims in subsequent interviews. “I can’t tolerate it. I won’t tolerate it,” he wrote.

Nice to see someone actually holding Rob ford up against his lies, even for a second. I'm sure the mayor will be apoplectic over this. He seems to become furious any time someone does the slightest push back against him. Ford's threats of legal action against other councilors have all proved empty this far, so we'll see how he reacts when someone puts their money where their mouth is.